News from Kenya - #12

Journal Entry 12-Day 23,24

Wednesday April 21, 2010 10.00AM

I had a good night’s sleep and I’m feeling well. I just had a nice breakfast of cereal, juice, tea and one of the small bananas that they grow here. They also grow the “normal” bananas like we have at home. The small ones are sweeter and I really enjoy them. Jane Osodo is here ironing Pamela’s, mamma and my clothes. She did the wash yesterday. I am so spoiled. At home I almost never iron and it is nice to wear such crisp clothing. Jane is grateful for the work and she does a good job. It’s a win-win situation.

Paul came about 9AM and has gone to Russia hospital to pick up the glasses for him and Jane Olao. Jane’s glasses cost 3500KS ($46) and Paul’s were 2,800 KS ($37). Jane’s eyes were worse and her lenses cost more. I am looking forward to seeing them in the glasses.

Monday, the 19^th I met with my college student Felix and his three brothers, Reagan, Edwin and Colins (the twins). They are all in their third year of high school. They brought their report cards. Reagan, who is sponsored, did well with a C+ average. The twins both had a D+ average. They missed three weeks of school, as they were sent home due to lack of enough school fees. I’ve written about them before-Felix who finished high school and one year of college in a certificate course in accounting, gave my $350 away to his brothers as he thinks it is more important that they finish high school and he can complete his college later. I enjoyed talking with them. They are all total orphans. Their dad died in 1994 and their mom in 1998. They have a younger sister in form one. She has been raised in an orphanage called Covenant house since age 2 when the mom died. Felix and his older brother Eric have done their best all these years to keep them alive. They live in their own small mud house in a very poor slum village called Nyalenda. Now that the three boys are home from Boarding school for the two-week break Felix is trying to earn enough to buy them all food. I gave them 2000KS (about $25) to help out. I hope I can find sponsors for the twins. I will try to give them more. I’m hoping Felix will return to college in January 2011 but I imagine he will give the money so the twins finish high school before he goes back. Life is such a struggle here.

A couple of the sponsored students that I had already talked with brought their letter and report forms for me to give to their sponsors.

Paul and Jane Olao arrived about 11 AM and after getting some money went to Russia hospital to be evaluated for their glasses. He called about 1 PM and said they were still in line waiting to be seen. They finally got back about 3:15PM with receipts for their glasses that they are picking up today.

Francis Omondi, who I’ve met on other trips was supposed to come to the flat and visit with me about 1 PM Monday. By 3.30PM he had not arrived. Typical “Kenyan time”- I wanted to take Paul and Jane to lunch and if Francis was here I was going to take him also. I called him and he said he was coming “in a little while”. I told him we would have to reschedule.

We went to lunch and then went to a bookstore to buy Jane some revision books for her poor subjects, math, chemistry and biology. She also needed a scientific calculator. It came to about 40-50 dollars. We will also give her about $25 to get a new school uniform. My sister Terri who sponsors Jane agreed to send $100 to cover those expenses. That will leave more funds for other individuals needs. Paul needed to get back to Usoma to meet with the man who was vaccinating the chickens. One hen had already died and several were sick. That is why it is so essential to get them vaccinated. Hopefully they will survive. They need to be vaccinated yearly. It costs about $25 to vaccinate 100 chickens – many more than they have. He vaccinated all the chickens around the area. Rom also had his vaccinated.

I went back to the flat and did some paperwork and thinking. Pamela came with Mamma around 9.00PM. She was supposed to fly back to London tonight but with all the planes grounded she doesn’t know when she will get back.

Tuesday April 20^th Pamela and I went to the store that sells the modems etc. for the Internet as I needed to purchase more Internet time. The connection has been very poor or non-existent since Monday afternoon. I had a nice talk with my friend Mary Lou on Monday at 7 AM (midnight her time) using Skype. We had an excellent connection and could see each other clearly. We talked for over an hour. It was nice to connect. At the Internet store they told me the networks have been having trouble and that they always have problems when it rains. Oh well, I bought the time and I hope it works. Again, I am spoiled not having to use the Internet cafes all the time.

Paul came to the flat at 10 AM and we walked about a mile to the Division of livestock office and met with Tobias to discuss the possibility of getting a dairy cow for the 4 Usoma women and their families as they requested. That was another education for me. Of course, I know nothing about raising cows. We were thinking of getting them a calf that they could raise together and eventually mate so she would have a calf of her own and start giving milk. That would take about two years. Tobias discouraged that idea. He said it would cost them more to feed the calf for two years and they would get no return on the investment. They would probably become discouraged and not take good care of the calf.

Instead he advised purchasing a cow that was about 5-7 months pregnant. That way they would have a couple of months to get used to caring for the cow and then she would give birth and start producing milk that they could use for nourishment for themselves and sell at the market. The average graded dairy cow gives 16-20 liters of milk/day. They sell the milk at 50 KS/liter. That would let the 4 families earn about $12/day- $3 each. That is better than the dollar/day or less that most earn and they would have nourishment for themselves as well. Hopefully the calf would be a female and they would raise it. If it is a bull, it is not very marketable and Tobias explained that sometimes they advise “putting it down” as it is very expensive to feed and it is impossible to recover the expense when you sell it at market for food. The normal way to mate the cow is through artificial insemination as it is much cheaper and they know the quality of the sperm they are using. Regarding the income generated: I was just talking to Paul and he said if each family earns $3/day he would advise them to participate in the micro-loan savings programs in the area and put $1.00/day away for savings. That way each family could save about $30/month and have it for emergency needs such as a new roof and also use it for school fees, uniforms etc.

To purchase a calf is about $200 dollars and the impregnated cow is about $500. However there are many other expenses that don’t change whether or not it is a calf or a cow. Tobias explained that graded cows are bred to produce large quantities of milk but they are not as strong as the local cows when it comes to resisting disease. They need to be sprayed with insecticide about every two weeks to prevent ticks, tsetse fly and biting fly. We would need to purchase a pump and the medicine. We would also need to provide funding to build a “house” for the animal-about $440.00. There are other expenses that I won’t detail here but the total for the impregnated cow with feed and necessary equipment comes to about 107,400KS ($1,450). The total cost for the calf would be about $1,150. It does seem a better investment to spend the larger amount if we can afford to give it to them. I will need to discuss it with our Board. Tobias said the cost includes teaching them about caring for the animal and general support at first.

Rom is concerned that a full-grown pregnant cow will be too much for the inexperienced women to handle all at once. We will confer with Tobias some more to discuss this and also discuss it with the women. These 4 women are HIV positive and participate in our transportation program. I hope if we do this they can work together without tension and peacefully share the work and the profits.

After my education about dairy cows we went to visit Fr. Charles, the pastor at Kibuye Church and a local Kenyan. He invited us for lunch and we also wanted to discuss getting Winnie Sunday, the student in day school who is being harassed at home, into a boarding school. He has some connections and we will go next Thursday to meet with a head teacher at a nearby school. Her sponsor said she is willing to help her financially to manage boarding school. Nothing is definite yet.

After lunch (rice, ugali, beef in soup kale, fresh tomatoes mixed with onions, and fresh fruit) Father showed us the new rectory being built. It is beautiful, too beautiful in my estimation. The dirt-poor people have been donating money, cement and supplies for this project since 2005. Here these people have nothing and they are building a mansion for the priests. They already have an adequate rectory, well built with electricity, water, “normal” toilets and many rooms. They plan to use that for offices. The new rectory will house about 5 priests and have suites for several guests. Fr. Charles is already living there but it is not finished yet. He is very nice and helps sponsor several children for school. It is a very busy active parish. He has a car and a driver. He had his driver bring us back to the flat. It is a very nice car with automatic windows, air conditioning (they rarely use it). There was a woman with 4 children that Father agreed to take some place, plus Paul in the back seat. I was in the front seat with the driver.

Paul went to take a driving lesson and I did some reading and fell asleep for about a half hour. Then Rom and Paul arrived and we discussed some of the goals remaining for my trip. They left and I watched TV. There was an excellent documentary on the life of leopards. I then washed my hair (not so simple a task here) and went to bed.

Wednesday (continued) 8.30PM

Paul came back with his glasses about 12.00 noon. They look wonderful on him and he said he can see so much better and the sun doesn’t hurt his eyes. They put a mild tint on the lenses. He was unable to get Jane’s glasses as the lenses had arrived back from Nairobi but they were not put into the frames yet. I thought it best that she pick them up herself so the frames would be fitted properly to her. He said they told him her glasses would be ready by about 2.30 PM today. He then left for a driving lesson.

Jane and her little brother Frank in class 2 arrived a few minutes after Paul left. She was coming to get her glasses. I told her the situation and she said she would wait and go to get them around 2.30PM. I visited with them and let Frank play some educational games on my Ipod touch. He caught on very quickly. He is a bright young boy. He is able to read English quite well although he doesn’t understand everything he is reading. He is able to understand simple English. I gave Jane a small storybook and she enjoyed reading it for a while. I gave them lunch and decided to go with them back to Russia hospital to get the glasses. We took a tuk tuk and arrived about 3 PM. We were told the doctor was not there but was coming back. We waited until 3.45PM along with a few other patients. We were having a good talk while we waited. At 3.45 I talked to one of the staff and she called the MD on her phone. He said he was coming shortly. We waited until 4.30PM and she called him again and he was “unavailable”. We waited another 10 minutes and decided to give up. The staff member stated it was unlikely he would return that late and advised all of us to go home. This is typical in Kisumu hospital clinics. We got a Tuk Tuk back to the flat. Jane was very disappointed and concerned about the cost of travel. I gave her enough money to cover her travel costs for tomorrow (and a little extra). She will go alone in the AM. She has the phone number of the doctor that was given to her by the staff member. She will ask Paul to call and make sure the MD and her glasses are in before she goes to pick them up.

Back at the flat I gave them some juice, bananas and cupcakes and they went on their way back to Usoma village about 5.30 PM. Paul and I checked our email and then went to RK hotel for supper. I had fish in coconut sauce that was very good but rich. I couldn’t finish all of it and they don’t have “doggie bags”. We came back to the flat and I gave Paul a treatment on his neck as it has been hurting him. I hope it helps. He went home and here I am now typing this journal.

End of Journal 12